Giuliani adds to White House woes as he defends president

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani suggested that the president wouldn’t necessarily comply with a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller. Joshua Roberts / Reuters

President Donald Trump’s new attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is delivering confounding and at times contradictory statements as he tries to lessen the legal burdens on his client from an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and a $130,000 hush payment to an adult movie star.

The former New York City mayor is embracing his client’s preferred approach to challenges as he mounts Mr Trump’s defence through the media. But it’s proving to be a bewildering display.

In an interview Sunday with ABC’s This Week, Mr Giuliani dismissed as rumour his own statements about the president’s payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, said he can’t speak to whether Mr Trump lied to the American people when he denied knowledge of the silencing agreement and wouldn’t rule out the president asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the Russia investigation.

Mr Giuliani also couldn’t say whether Mr Trump’s lawyer had made similar payments to other women on the president’s behalf.

He said that despite Mr Trump’s openness to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation, he would strongly advise the president against it.

“I’m going to walk him into a prosecution for perjury like Martha Stewart?” Mr Giuliani said, referring to the lifestyle TV star convicted in 2004 of lying to investigators and obstruction in an insider trading case.

Mr Giuliani couldn’t guarantee that the president wouldn’t end up asserting his constitutional right to refuse to answer any questions that might incriminate him.

“How could I ever be confident of that?” he asked.

During a 2016 campaign rally, Mr Trump disparaged staffers of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, for taking the Fifth during a congressional investigation into Mrs Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

Mr Giuliani also suggested that the president wouldn’t necessarily comply with a subpoena from Mueller, whose investigation has been repeatedly labeled a “witch hunt” by the president.

A subpoena fight would likely find its way to the Supreme Court, which has never firmly decided whether presidents can be compelled to speak under oath.

Mr Giuliani’s aggressive defence recent weeks has pleased Mr Trump, though it exasperated White House aides and attorneys and left even supporters questioning his tactics.

“It seems to me that the approach last week of the Trump team plays into the hands of Mueller’s tactic to try, at any cost, to try to find technical violations against lower-ranking people so that they can be squeezed,” Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor who has informally counseled the president, said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Mr Giuliani, who was hired by Trump last month, said he’s still learning the facts of the Mueller case and the details of Mr Trump’s knowledge of the payment to Ms Daniels, who has alleged a sexual tryst in 2006. The $130,000 payment was made by Mr Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, days before the 2016 election, raising questions of compliance with campaign finance and ethics laws.

When Mr Trump was asked last month aboard Air Force One if he knew about the payment to the actress, he said no. He also said he didn’t know why Mr Cohen had made the payment or where he got the money.

Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the president, said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union that Mr Trump meant that he didn’t know about the payment at the time it was made, not at the time the question was asked.

Mr Giuliani said last week that the president had reimbursed Mr Cohen for that payment and other unspecified items.

He said then that he first made Mr Trump aware of the payment shortly after joining the case but now says he doesn’t know when the president found out about it. Mr Giuliani told BuzzFeed last week that Mr Cohen had complained after the election about not being paid for his work in silencing Ms Daniels before a $35,000 monthly retainer was thrashed out.

Mr Trump said Friday that Mr Giuliani needed to “get his facts straight” but insisted they weren’t changing their story. He has called Ms Daniels’ allegations of an affair “false and extortionist.”

When asked Sunday whether Mr Trump knew about the payment after the campaign, Mr Giuliani demurred.

He also said he wasn’t sure whether Mr Cohen had paid off any other women but indicated it was possible.

“I have no knowledge of that, but I would think if it was necessary, yes,” Mr Giuliani said.

Mr Cohen no longer represents the president, Mr Giuliani said, saying it would “be a conflict right now.” The attorney is facing a criminal investigation in New York, and FBI agents raided his home and office several weeks ago seeking records about the Daniels nondisclosure agreement and other matters.

Michael Avenatti, Ms Daniels’ attorney, said Sunday on This Week that he thinks it’s “obvious ... to the American people that this is a cover-up, that they are making it up as they go along. They don’t know what to say because they’ve lost track of the truth.”

Legal experts have said the revelation that Mr Trump reimbursed Mr Cohen raises new questions, including whether the money represented repayment of an undisclosed loan or could be seen as reimbursement for a campaign expenditure. Either could be legally problematic.

Both Mr Giuliani and the president have insisted the payment was not a campaign expense.

Neither the payment nor the liability to Mr Cohen was disclosed on the Trump campaign or the president’s financial disclosures.

Mr Giuliani maintained Sunday that the payment can’t be considered an in-kind campaign contribution because there was another explanation for it.

“This was for another purpose, to protect him, to protect his family,” he said. “It may have involved the campaign. Doesn’t matter.”

Mr Giuliani said the financial arrangement with his attorney wasn’t revealed on Mr Trump’s 2017 personal financial disclosure because “it isn’t a liability, it’s an expense.”